In 1962, along with 10 other Washington University students, I boarded an aging student ship in New York bound for Strasbourg, France, to participate in the university’s first Junior Year Abroad in France. In 1984, as a WUSTL lecturer of French and director of the Internship in European Business Program, I boarded a jetliner to Paris with 12 other Washington University students, a trip I was to repeat for 23 years. That initial transatlantic crossing in 1962 launched me on a year of discovery and on a career that now in 2013 has given me a 50-year perspective on study abroad.

Group of students with bicycles
The first cohort of WUSTL study-abroad students explored Alsace by bicycle. (courtesy photo from Crossing Culture: in English and in French.)